Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Gets in Your Face

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Engage in deadly dances at 15,000 feet.

By Levi Buchanan

Though I haven't yet played Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, I'm heartened to know that somewhere deep in Namco, the development team knew exactly what caused me to veer away from the franchise several iterations ago: they stopped being thrill rides. Sure, you're screaming through the heavens in incredible war machines, but it was all about keeping them as far away from each other as possible.

Weren't the Ace Combat games supposed to be dogfighters? Unless I eliminated enemy planes when they were tiny blips on the horizon, I ended up on the losing side of a duel where one pilot – the computer – didn't have to struggle with clinical controls. It felt pointless and unfair, and so my attention drifted, despite always finding them attractive games.

Enter CRA – Close Range Assault – the central new feature of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon. Though you can still go for distance kills with missiles, CRA is designed to really emphasize the panicked thrills of a duel at 15,000 feet. When you maneuver close enough to an enemy fighter, tapping a button initiates CRA. The camera locks on to your target and you temporarily sacrifice complete control over your fighter. Instead, you use the stick to position your target inside a red assault circle. If you can keep them in that ring, lay on the cannons to light 'em up.

Boom – right there Namco addresses the frustration of close-quarters dogfighting, allowing you instead to engage in a vicious mach-3 tug-'o-war deathmatch without futzing with controls. No tension is lost as you watch your rival zoom right by you before you even let a single canon burst rip.

Ace Combat gets some arcade thrills.

Another benefit of CRA's close camera? Now you delight in watching your cannons chew through steel. Wings disintegrate before your eyes. And when you hit something critical, the enemy jet explodes in a flash of fire, light, and twisted metal. Before the camera returns behind your plane, you fly right through the explosion (thankfully, there's always a plane-sized gap in the shrapnel, right?). Finally, a genuine "Top Gun"-style thrill – a reason for me to put Ace Combat: Assault Horizon on my radar after sadly passing over the series for so long.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is currently slated for late 2011. That should give Ace Combat fans ample time to dream up new paint jobs for the fighters, which they can enter in an upcoming Facebook contest. Winners get their skins in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.